The present invention relates to barrier moving operators, such as garage door operators, and, more particularly, to learning new security codes to the operator.
A barrier moving operator usually comprises a barrier moving unit, or opener, such as a controlled motor, and intelligent activation and safety devices. The opener is typically activated in response to an access code transmitted from a remote transmitter. RF signaling is the most common means of transmitting the access codes.
Many barrier moving systems, for example, garage door operators use codes to activate the system which change after each transmission. Such varying codes, called rolling codes, are created by the transmitter and acted on by the receiver, both of which operate in accordance with the same method to predict a next access code to be sent and received. A known rolling type access code includes four portions, such as a fixed transmitter number identification portion, a rolling code portion, a fixed transmitter type identification portion, and a fixed switch identification portion. The fixed transmitter identification is a unique transmitter identification number. The rolling portion is a number that changes every transmission in order to confirm that the transmission is not a recorded transmission. The type identification is used to notify the barrier moving operator of the type and features of the transmitter. The switch identification is used to identify which switch on the transmitter is being pressed. There are systems where the function performed is different depending on which switch is pressed.
When the garage door operator is installed, the homeowner receives at least one handheld transmitter that is already trained into the operator. In order to operate the door from a new learning transmitter, there is a two-step learning procedure for training the new learning transmitter. First step is to teach the learning transmitter the type and potentially the code of the owner's handheld transmitter. While holding the handheld transmitter a few inches from the learning transmitter, pressing and holding the handheld transmitter's button active and at the same time pressing the button on the learning transmitter, the owner teaches the access code type and frequency to the learning transmitter. The second step of the learning process is to train the learning transmitter to the operator. To do this, the learn button on the overhead operator has to be pressed, and within 30 seconds the learning transmitter should be activated.
The car manufacturers presently provide learning transmitters permanently mounted within a car. When the homeowner purchases a car with a learning transmitter, the two-step procedure for the rolling code type transmitter system must be performed in order to get the new learning transmitter to operate the owner's garage door operator. There is a problem due to the fact that the homeowners usually do not know that there is a learn button on their garage door operator, and secondly, it is troublesome to get up on a ladder to activate the button on the overhead garage door operator, and then within 30 second to send transmission to the operator, especially in the case of a car built-in learning transmitter.
Also, presently, when the first step of learning of the code by the learning transmitter is performed from the owner's handheld transmitter, the learning transmitter information does not have any correlations with the handheld transmitter code. In this case any automatic learning system is in jeopardy of reducing the security of the system. If an auto learn system, which does not provide a correlation portion for the code trained into the learning transmitter is used, a code from any transmitter could be trained into a learning transmitter and then to the door opener to operate the door. So, there is a need to provide a higher level of security for the learning process.
Therefore, a need exists for an easier method for training a barrier movement operator to learn a rolling code from a newly trained learning transmitter, and to provide a higher security level for the operator system.